About SHR

We’re just two girls who love watching hockey and then talking about it. We’re huge fans of the Dallas Stars - we love the game, the players, and the entire franchise - but we also just really love hockey. This is where we indulge in our minor obsession.

The best way to get in touch with us is to post a comment on one of our posts, but if you need to, feel free to email us at stophittingrobidas@gmail.com.

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Posts tagged ‘Ralph and Razor’

The latest news out of Starsworld is the announcement that starting next season, The Ticket will be the exclusive radio home of Stars game broadcasts. The five-year agreement includes pre-game shows for most games and post-game shows for all of them., all of which can be heard on 1310 AM and 104.1 FM. The official release, which talks about the fact that The Ticket and the Stars have pretty much grown up together and mentions that Ralph and Razor aren’t going anywhere thanks to their recently extended contracts, can be found here.

In a round-about way, Stars Brass answered a question many have had concerning Tobias Stephan when they did not snag Curtis Sanford off waivers this past week. If the brass is shopping for a new back-up goalie, they must not be in too big of a hurry to find one. Despite media rumors that the Stars were interested in Sanford, a small cap hit who put up decent numbers during his time in Vancouver, no moves were made. It’s been said that the upper management has a lot of faith in Stephan and Tippett is the only one not trusting him, and this non-story may go a little ways toward proving that right. Personally, I’m glad. Let Stephan show what he can do (and throwing him to the wolves in a game that was lost in the first period doesn’t count) before you decide you need a new back-up.

For those of you who have been missing The Morrow Show every week, Morrow stopped by BaD radio on Thursday and gave Bob and Dan a great interview. He talks about his kids, his injury, his Facebook or lack thereof, the Avery debolicle, and other things in a lengthy half-hour chat. It’s good stuff, as usual for The Morrow Show. Mark at Andrew’s Stars Page has the audio here. In related news, Happy Birthday to Morrow! He’s 30 today.

The Stars blogosphere is excited to welcome Defending Big D, a promising new SB Nation blog based around community. Swing by and take a look. 🙂

Finally, if anyone was wondering why Razor is growing that mockery of a mustache, apparently it’s to be ironic.

If you’ve ever listened to the other team’s broadcast, or watched a game that doesn’t involve the Stars, you’ve probably spent half the time wishing you had Ralph and Razor instead of those homers who don’t know what they’re talking about. Sure, some other teams do have good play-by-play or color commentary guys, but they just never seem to compare.

What better way to remember some of our favorite moments from 2008 than through the voices of the duo that was there through it all?

Because this blog is new and written by people with bad memory, all of the ones in this post are actually from the 2008 part of the 08-09 season. If anyone has some of their own favorites, say from the end of 07-08, they should absolutely contribute!

—–

After the Stars lost their first two games of their late-October, early-November road trip:
– “Your special teams (powerplay and penalty killing) are the electrical. Right now – they aren’t up to code and are probably a fire hazard.” – Razor, in an analogy about how the team is a house in need of repair.

From the 12/02/08 game against the Calgary Flames:
-“That’s an elbow-rectomy.” – Razor, after Chris Conner had his face introduced to someone’s elbow for about the fifth time in that game.

From the 12/13/08 game against the Nashville Predators:
– “Left hand larcenous glove grab of the highest order!” – Razor, after Tobias Stephan made a highlight reel glove save.

After it was announced Sean Avery would not be returning to the Stars:
– “For this hockey team, the 08-09 Stars, the guy was like a skating, swaggering, insolent, Gucci-labeled case of necrotizing fasciitis.” – Razor, in why Avery was so toxic to the team.

From the 12/23/08 game against the Toronto Maple Leafs:
– “Steve, Santa’s not going to come to your door if you keep that up.” – Razor, while the camera was on a very smug Steve Ott, who’d just successfully agitated a Leaf into taking a penalty
– “Nik Hagman tried to pull a Ribeiro on Ribeiro, and it didn’t work” – Ralph, after Niklas Hagman tried to puckhandle around Mike Ribeiro unsuccessfully.

I don’t have the direct quote, but Razor telling Ric Renner that his hair looks like something out of a boy band also absolutely belongs on this list.

—–

The Stars have their first game of 2009 tonight against the Oilers, in Edmonton. Ought to be a good showing, with both teams well rested and fighting to climb into playoff spot territory. Here’s to great start (and another great year of Ralph and Razor)!

Both the Leafs and the Stars had seen improvement in the recent stretch of games, and despite goaltender struggles, and both looked to continue building that success.

Playing in Toronto was a bit of a homecoming for a handful of Stars players. Trevor Daley grew up there. James Neal hails from nearby Whitby and Krys Barch from nearby Hamilton.

The starting group for Dallas featured both Neal and Daley, a bit of a gift from head coach Dave Tippett. Neal was on the top line with Mike Modano and Jere Lehtinen, and Daley was paired up with Stephane Robidas. Marty Turco started in net.

An early fight between Krys Barch and Andre Deveaux, only 2:51 into the game, set the energy level for the Dallas Stars. Clearly, Deveaux was prepared for Barch, reverse-jerseying him to steal the win, but it hardly worked to discourage the feisty enforcer, who would show up later for round two.

While they each took their five minutes, James Neal opened the scoring when he stole Daley’s rebound from Vesa Toskala with his skate as he crashed the crease and kicked it up to his stick. Before Toskala could react, the puck had been tossed behind him and into the net, putting the Leafs down at a very fixable 1-0.

That clarification is important, because it wasn’t really all that fixable for long.

The goal came at 3:23, with assists from Trevor Daley and Jere Lehtinen.

The next goal came only five minutes later.

This time it was Steve Ott to light the lamp, at 8:55. He’d camped out in the crease, apparently invisible to Toskala, who moved out of his way to cover a possible Ribeiro shot. Ribeiro passed it to Ott instead, who threw it in a fairly open net.

The Leafs just continued to fall apart from there.

A handful of hits and giveaways led to Fabian Brunnstrom demonstrating the power of an impressive solo effort.

At 10:45, he forced his way to the front of the net after collecting a dropped pass from Ott, protecting the puck with his leg as he swept through the offensive zone. Brunnstrom crashed the net, flying across the crease and flinging the puck in behind Toskala.

The assists went to Steve Ott and Stephane Robidas.

Ott, absolutely on fire, drew a roughing penalty from Deveaux at 13:38 after he declined a fight (due to his healing hand) and turned around and laid out one of his teammates. The Stars went on power play for the first time in the game.

During the PP, Stephane Robidas and Brad Richards manned the points, passing the puck back and forth looking for a shooting lane. Richards found one, releasing a slap shot too fast for Toskala to get a piece of.

Mike Modano got the second assist.

Mikhail Grabovski took two minutes for elbowing at 15:21, but the score remained the same, and the rest of the period went by without incident. Dallas went into the first intermission up 4-0.

Second period.

If you thought the Leafs would get an earful during intermission and come back on fire, you were wrong.

It only took 3:45 into the second period for the Stars to continue their goal-scoring onslaught.

This time it was thanks to the perseverance of Krys Barch, down on his knees in front of the opposing crease, as he forced the puck into the net around a sprawled Toskala.

He was assisted by Landon Wilson and Trevor Daley.

The game continued uneventfully for seven minutes, the pace appearing to slowly move in favor of the Leafs. However, that wasn’t actually the case.

Despite being up by five goals at this point, the Stars went on the attack again halfway through the second. This one came from Mike Ribeiro, with a goal very similar to Ott’s; he camped out in the slot, and waited for a pass to catch Toskala out of position. He was assisted by Wilson and Niskanen.

As if being down 6-0 wasn’t bad enough (or enough like being in a real live video game), the Stars scored again barely a minute later.

It was James Neal again.

Toskala, poorly recovering from a save, was not even close to being able to stop Neal as he shoveled the loose rebound into the net. Grossman and Lehtinen got the assists.

At this point, Toskala was pulled and replaced by Curtis Joseph.

The Leafs finally regained their footing after this goal, and I say finally because it was getting really pathetic for them and the pity was ruining the excitement of winning a game by 7 goals.

It was Toronto who scored the last goal of the period, with a fast shot from Jason Blake that beat Turco on the glove side.

Dominic Moore and Tomas Kaberle got the assists.

Second period ended. Razor asked Neal during intermission if he considered a hat trick when he already had two goals, and Neal admitted that he was in fact thinking about it.

Third period started.

The Leafs, sorta determined to try and climb out of a 7-1 hole and gaining a little momentum off discovering that Marty Turco was not in fact a solid wall, came out with energy similar to what they showed at the beginning of the first period.

And by that, we mean violent energy.

This time it was only 1:57 in when Deveaux and Barch dropped the gloves for another round.

Barch was better prepared, despite basically getting mugged at the beginning of the fight, and ended up forcing Deveaux to call for the refs to break it up. Even then, Barch wouldn’t let go. Nice rematch there.

James Neal took two minutes for hooking at 3:14.

Midway through the third, the Leafs managed to score their second and final goal, with a nice play from Deveaux and Stempniak to set up Mikhail Grabovski.

A small incident at 11:30 left Steve Ott and Pavel Kubina each with minor penalties (roughing and hi-sticking).

At 17:20, Jonas Frogren got two minutes for holding, setting up a very determined James Neal with a perfect opportunity for getting that third goal.

You could see the other Stars trying to help Neal get his hat trick, occasionally force-feeding him the puck instead of taking the shot themselves.

He finally went for it, rushing in and trying a shot from the upper part of the faceoff circle to Joseph’s right. It went in, and at 18:34 in the third, James Neal got his first career hat trick.

Andrew Hutchinson and Marty Turco assisted.

The game ended as an 8-2 blowout in favor of the Stars.

Notes:

The three game stars, in order: Neal, Robidas, Daley

Neal and Daley each took their game star twirls on the ice after the game for their hometown fans.

Turco stopped 20 of 22 shots for a .909 sv%

This game was the debut of Brian Sutherby, acquired from the Ducks.

Neal’s hat trick came on the 10th anniversary of Mike Modano’s fifth career hat trick, which also happened in Toronto against the Leafs.

Fabian Brunnstrom’s goal turned out to be the game winner, his 4th of the season.

15 Stars had points in the game, including 8 players with a multi-point night.

Conclusion: It was a great start to the holidays, an unfortunate loss for the Leafs, and overall a much-needed boost in points, stats, and confidence.

SHR +/-:

Nicklas Grossman: two for the assist but minus-one for the negative +/-: +1Stephane Robidas: two for each assist and one for leading the team in +/-: +5Matt Niskanen: two for the assist; +2Trevor Daley: two for each assist and one for leading the team in blocked shots; +5Mike Modano: two for the assist; +2Krys Barch: three for the goal, one for each fight, and one for leading the team in hits; +6James Neal: three for each goal, one for determination, and one for leading the team in SOG; +11Brian Sutherby: one for a solid debut; +1Landon Wilson: two for each assist; +4Jere Lehtinen: two for each assist; +4Andrew Hutchinson: two for the assist; +2Steve Ott: three for the goal, two for the assist, and two for being a fired-up ball of energy for the entire game; +7Marty Turco: two for the assist and two for a good game; +4Mike Ribeiro: three for the goal and two for the assist; +5Brad Richards: three for the goal; +3Fabian Brunnstrom: three for the goal and two for the assist; +5

7:53pm* So commercial break. Welcome to SHR’s first ever live blog! Kristine here. I missed the first seven minutes of play because getting bubble tea took a bit longer than I thought, but it doesn’t look like much happened. I did make it back in time to see Turks make an amazing save just now. Slid left in a near split, covered the puck with his leg – it was amazing. (+2) Equally amazing was his little roll off the puck. +1 on ice point for that. Oooh and Neal with a shot on goal. Go Neal!

7:56pm Ooh, blue in the net with Turco. Bet he loves that.

7:56pm Icing against the Stars.

7:58pm Love that Neal-Mo-Crombeen are together again. Neal just took a hit from somebody and the guy doing the hitting was the one who went down. Nice. (+1)

7:58pm Louibot with a floating shot on goal.

7:59pmBlues score on an ugly giveaway from Ribs (-1). 7 minutes left in the first period and it’s 1-0 Blues.

8:03pmBlues score again. Turco was so far to the front right of his crease that I’m not surprised he couldn’t cover it. He got distracted trying to play the puck and it just didn’t work out (-1). 4:40 left in the first; 2-0 Blues.

8:12pm End of the first period and we’re still down by one. At least we’ve scored in the first period. We don’t seem to do that much. Then again, looking at the NHL.com stats page, neither do the Blues, and they’ve done it twice tonight.

Brenden Morrow was on 104.1 The Ticket. Sadly, I missed all but the end. I did catch him saying that he felt Sergei Zubov would be back in the lineup sooner than expected. Yay, Zubie!

Now I’m listening to 103.3, off a tip from the Official Forums. Apparently, Mike Ribeiro is scheduled to be on at 2:40. It’s currently 2:35, and they’re talking about… football.

And just as I was going comatose, they announce that they’re done with football and will have Ribs after the commercial break.

Some interesting pieces from the interview:

When asked if any Dallas Stars travel with a bodyguard: “Ah.. no?”
This led to them talking about how hockey players don’t need bodyguards, because, really, who would challenge a hockey player?

When asked if he was offended by the term ‘scrappy’: “No, not really.”
Ribs apparently takes it as a compliment.

When asked about the fact they the Stars are no longer underdogs, and if they have to guard themselves from their own egos: “Well you have to… you cannot think about what you did last year and think it’s going to be as easy…”
Some nice paraphrasing, I know. Basically, Ribs was saying that they recognize it’ll still be a tough season and they’re going to focus on it one game at a time.

When asked about Sean Avery: “I think he’ll be good for the team… a lot of speed, a lot of talent. I think he’s fit in already. He’s a funny guy. He’s a different character.”
Ribs is going to teach Avery to like Prince concerts, or something. I lost what he was saying under the interviewers, who were talking over him a little bit.

Kind of a short interview. Not bad, though. The questions asked were a little lacking in the originality department, but Ribeiro did have some good answers for them.

It includes:
A funny chat about wanting to hit Sean Avery. Talking about the season schedule. A little bit about the Morrow twins. Learning from the Detroit Red Wings. “You come in a little young and dumb”.

In other broadcasting news, Ralph and Razor have signed a new contract and will be with us until at least 2013-2014. This makes me (and probably anyone that’s every watched or listened to a Stars game) very very happy.